The Imperfect Foreigners

by H. F. ELLIS

THE British, who are the nicest people on earth, do not take it greatly to heart when their way of life is misunderstood and disparaged by Frenchmen, Italians, Chinese, or other races indigenous to Europe, Asia, Alrira, or South America. Such people are admitted to be peculiar and prone to fall into error; they are born so, as Mrs. Gamp well said, and will please themselves.

Towards citizens of the United States, however, we British are unwilling to extend the same indulgence. Criticism from that quarter wounds us deeply. This is not merely because, unlike the innuendoes of the Argentines and the Greeks, it tends to be written, or spoken, in a language we readily understand, but because we have a feeling of kinship with Americans and think they ought to know better. It grieves us to see a people whose judgment we should like, despite every discouragement, to respect falling a prey to ridiculous misconceptions about us.

The use of that word “kinship,” for instance, will probably inflame the Middle West, which labors under the extraordinary delusion that the British regard the American nation as a collection of renegade Englishmen who made a mistake in the heat of the moment some two hundred years ago and have not yet brought themselves to admit it. The British have long ceased to take their hopeful view of America. As far back as 1943, when considerable numbers of U.S. troops began to arrive in Britain, it became clear that Americans were not English at all. Their headgear alone betrayed them. Their names had in many cases a distinctly outlandish ring. Their military police would not have looked out of place in Monaco. And these impressions have been, if anything, strengthened by our scarcely less numerous (and equally welcome) post-war visitors from across the Atlantic. The habit of cleaning old paintbrushes on one’s tie strikes us as exotic and unEnglish; so does the wearing of knee-length jackets; and so also, in particular, does a certain masterful, not to say peremptory, manner of addressing the drivers of taxicabs. One way and another it is now freely admitted over here that Americans are irretrievably foreign.

Still, the feeling of kinship persists. Americans, if one may put it so, are not yet very good at being foreigners. They keep slipping back into normality. One’s attention is constantly being distracted from the absurdity of the shoes, or from the word “Alabama” embroidered in green wool across the chest, by the utterance of some remark so sound, so rational, so instinct with good sense and moderation, that it might almost have been made by an Englishman. Even a crew cut can be forgotten when its owner is illustrating a golf story with a quotation from Shakespeare or Kipling. So, with the best will in the world, we find it impossible to rank Americans as Class I Aliens. We cannot put them in the same bin as Mexicans or Turks, this may be exasperating for Chicagoans and others, but il is so.

For these and kindred reasons, then, we have singled out the United States as a country whose good opinion we value. It is a unique distinction, and the people of that great Republic must shoulder their responsibility in the matter and try to do better. The following short list of some of their grosser misconceptions may help them to make a start.

GROSS AMERICAN MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT BRITAIN

That the British are down and out. Washington Irving started this rumor. John Bull, he wrote, “has of late become as shrivelled and shrunk as a frost-bitten apple. His scarlet gold-laced waistcoat, which bellied out so bravely in those prosperous days when he sailed before the wind, now hangs loosely about him like a mainsail in a calm. . . . Instead of strutting about, as formerly, with his three-cornered hat on one side; flourishing his cudgel, and bringing it down every moment with a hearty thump upon the ground ... he now goes about whistling thoughtfully to himself, with his head drooping down, his cudgel tucked under his arm, and his hands thrust to the bottom of his breeches pockets, which are evidently empty.”

This was written in the early part of the nineteenth century, and must have made Queen Victoria whistle thoughtfully to herself at intervals. It is still as true as the day it was written.

W. Irving also wrote: “He is a little fond of playing the magnifico abroad.” I’m.

That their beer is flat, warm, and sour. On the contrary, our beer is still, bitter, and served with the chill off. The reason we drink it like that is that that is the way it should be drunk. There is a stuff called lager which is of so insubstantial a nature that the addition of bubbles of gas to it makes little deference one way or the other, and so tasteless that it can be iced without serious damage. But we don’t drink lager. We drink beer.

Allied with these misleading stories about our beer is the theory that the inns or “pubs” in which it is supplied are so quaint that you smack your head against the lintel every time you go in or out. The truth is that our inns are comparatively safe places to walk about in. Many of them have been rebuilt and are now as clean, commodious, and inviting as schools or hospitals. To be certain of smacking your head you must try a sweetshop in a really remote village.

That a sweetshop in a remote village in England is perilous in the extreme. This is not so. There are far more dangerous sweetshops in remote villages in Wales and Scotland. The door in these places, in addition to having a lintel low enough to take the top of your head clean off, opens inwards onto a step-down in pitch darkness. Very small men may escape the first obstacle, but the oubliette can hardly fail to trap them. Still, even here there are consolations. As the door is opened an ingenious contrivance goes ting-a-ling-a-ling, so that the visitor, as he crashes to the floor, has the sensation of being saved by the bell at the end of the round. What is more, he will have plenty of time to pick himself up and brush himself down before anyone appears to attend to him. Visitors must learn to count their blessings.

That the British are unsociable, standoffish, and inclined to spend their time behind high hedges drinking tea in a self-satisfied way. This is all on a par with the vile falsehood about our not talking in trains — a calumny so baseless that it jerks me willy-nilly into the first person.

On an April morning, a year or two ago, I caught the 4.10 A.M. train from Glenwood Springs, heading for Denver on the Royal Gorge route. At 10.26 A.M. the man next me in the coach, an American if ever there was one, said, “Stops here for ten minutes,”and got out. This was his first remark in a journey not altogether devoid of interest. We had come 200 miles through some of the finest scenery in the Rocky Mountains; we had climbed from 5758 feet at Glenwood to 10,221 at Tennessee Pass, and snaked and looped our way down again to 5500; we had seen the dawn break in a cloudless sky, gilding the high peaks (if the expression has not been used before) with an unearthly radiance; we had passed places with names as evocative as Eagle River Canyon, Cotopaxi, and Texas Creek. We might have seen a grizzly, I dare say, if we had known where to look. He had nothing to say to any of it.

It is true that the earlier part of the trip was at a time of day unsuited to garrulity. It is also true that I was not at the man’s side throughout, for I made a number of trips to the observation car (or, if you will, Vista Dome) and also left him to get a shave and later on to have breakfast. But, as against that, I tripped over his feet, going and coming back, on every occasion, so that it would be idle for him to pretend that he was asleep. And I maintain that, had our positions been reversed, had it been my country that was unfolding its beauty and grandeur to a foreigner’s eyes, I should have broken the ice by 8 A.M. at latest with a courteous “See that?” or a “Rather jolly over there!” As things were, of course, I could say nothing until he spoke to me.

The legend of British unsociability has grown up largely because our journeys are so short. Southampton to London, a route familiar to Americans, takes a bare two hours — hardly time to light a pipe, get the carriage window down, and frame an opening sentence about the advisability of getting it up again, before Waterloo (a station, by the way, whose attractions Americans are apt to underrate) looms up round the bend. If visitors from overseas would make a point of taking the morning train for Inverness (10.20 from Euston, but check up at the station), they would find us all talking quite unaffectedly a long way this side of the Scottish border.

As for the complaint of high hedges, I don’t see the point of it. The hedges were quite low when they were put in, and have grown up in the course of time. We drink tea behind them because that is where our houses are. And if any American wants to know why we drink tea rather than coffee he had better come over here and find out.

That the British think that whatever they do is right, and that anyone who takes a different, view is mad, misguided, or just hopelessly foreign. I should have thought I had dealt with this one, by inference, already. But it may be worth emphasizing that we welcome criticism, from whatever quarter, provided it is deserved. It is not our fault if the points on which other countries choose to attack us are just those on which we happen to be unassailable. We are by no means purblind to our defects. That we are overgenerous, too inclined to think the best of others, prone to shoulder burdens that tax our strength too highly — these are counts in the indictment to which we should unhesitatingly admit. But no one has the sense to bring them up against us.

TRIFLING BRITISH MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT AMERICA

Someone will ask, at about this point, whether there are not some aspects of American life about which the British, in their turn, are misinformed. The answer is, perhaps, yes. But it must be said at once that, whereas American misconceptions about Britain are the fault of Americans, British misconceptions about America are also the fault of Americans.

The truth of this proposition, long apparent, in this country, may not be immediately acceptable to American readers. But consider. American citizens come over here in surprisingly large numbers and observe us in our own home surroundings; their knowledge is firsthand, and they have only their own faulty observation to thank for the astonishing errors into which they fall. The British, on the other hand, being unable (for reasons into which W. Irving would not scruple to enter) to visit the United States in person, must take their ideas of American life and manners from films and books purporting to represent them. If then they are mistaken in believing that all doors in the States are thirty feet high, all policemen corrupt, and all fruit trees perpetually covered in blossom, is it not clear where the blame for this state of affairs must lie?

These, however, are minor matters. A far more serious misconception, directly attributable to Hollywood, haunted my own mind for years, until a fortunate trip to New York killed it stone dead in a night. It concerned the management of saloons.

These, so far as my observation went, were of two types. There was the long shiny saloon, empty until it was entered by a man who had just been dismissed by his newspaper or rejected by his girl, or in extreme cases both. This citizen called for whisky, indicated by abrupt gestures that the bottle was to be left at his elbow, and continued to drink its contents with marked desperation until he fell to the floor in a fit or was led away by Spencer Tracy. No money passed in either case. The second, or Western, type of saloon was full enough, goodness knows, but you could reckon that within half an hour of opening time every bottle in the place would be broken, most of the legs would be off the tables, and somebody would have gone backwards through the door without troubling to open it. These things worried me. I did not see, on the data available to me, how the American saloon business could possibly be on a sound financial basis. But no sooner had I got to New York, asked for a whisky, and been told the price of it than my worries were at an end. Breakages and incidentals were covered.

BASIC DIFFERENCES

I dare say, given space and time, I could dig up a number of other personal misconceptions that vanished like wood smoke in the clear, hard light of the American scene. But it may be more profitable to set down what, after half a lifetime spent in Britain and three weeks in the States, I have noted as the basic differences between our two peoples. All other assumed differences may, for all practical purposes, be taken to be misconceptions.

Americans swing their shoulders when then walk, letting the hands hang loosely with the fingers extended. The British swing their arms, with the fingers curled up. (Note: This refers only to men. I did not, owing to a natural shyness, make any observations of the way American women walk. This may point to another basic difference between us, but I do not press the matter.)

Americans, when taking their ease, lean back against the walls of buildings or other suitable vertical surfaces, with their hands in their trouser pockets. The British, in similar circumstances, lean forwards, with their arms resting on the top of gates. (This may be due to the fact that England has, on the whole, more gates per head of population.)

Americans, when showing their country to foreigners, take a detached view. They do not, possibly owing to its great size, seem to feel personally responsible for everything that goes on in it. The British are incapable of detachment and feel the keenest proprietorial interest in anything they have to show. (For this reason, an American is able, without boastfulness, to detail the height, weight, and cost of the Rockefeller Building. The Englishman, entering Westminster Abbey, cannot without immodesty rise above a “Not a bad old building”; he has a sneaking conviction he put the thing up himself.)

This concludes my list of basic differences. I draw no conclusions from them — save to observe that none of them seems to me sufficiently fundamental to exclude the possibility of a genuine Anglo-American accord.